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A nominalism you must refuse

About some things, I'm a happy nominalist. Whether you consider a sapphire to be a species of ruby or a separate type of thing is, as far as I'm concerned, a matter of indifference and a matter of convention. Whether something is a hill or a mountain is also a matter of convention, as all of us know who have watched a rather boring movie with a rather long name starring Hugh Grant.

But there is one kind of nominalism that must be decisively rejected, and that is nominalism about human beings. Here are some quotes from a classic bit of nominalist nonsense about human beings:

Under this conception, the possession of dignity by humans signifies that they have an inherent moral worth. In other words, because human beings possess dignity we cannot do what we like to them, but instead have direct moral obligations towards them. Indeed, this understanding of dignity is also usually considered to serve as the grounding for human rights....If all human beings possess dignity–this extraordinary moral worth–we need some explanation of what it is about the species Homo sapiens that makes them so deserving. When we start looking at particular characteristics that might ground dignity – language-use, moral action, sociality, sentience, self-consciousness, and so on – we soon see that none of these qualities are in fact possessed by each and every human. We are therefore left wondering why all human beings actually do possess dignity....Obviously, given controversies over abortion, stem cell research, genetic interventions, animal experimentation, euthanasia and so on, bioethics does need to engage in debates over which entities possess moral worth and why. But these are best conducted by using the notion of ‘moral status’ and arguing over the characteristics that warrant possession of it. Simply stipulating that all and only human beings possess this inherent moral worth because they have dignity is arbitrary and unhelpful.

Yeah, gosh. If some individuals of a species lack a particular property, then obviously that property has nothing to do with the nature of the species, and we're just "left wondering" what could possibly bind the members of the species together or why we should treat some species differently from others. It's a poser, all right.

But of course, it isn't a poser. It's a no-brainer. If I say that man is a rational animal, of course that doesn't mean that I think every single human individual is a rational animal. It means that it's of the nature of man as a species to be rational. A human being who hasn't yet developed rationality or who has lost consciousness due to illness, age, or injury is still a member of the species whose nature it is to be rational animals when fully developed and not suffering privation. This is hard? It's no harder than knowing that a three-legged dog is still a dog. But it's too hard for some contemporary bioethicisists, including the ethicist Alasdair Cochrane, from whose article "Undignified Bioethics" the above quotations come.

Wesley J. Smith, who provides the quotations from Cochrane (only the abstract being available on-line), gets it. Here's Smith:

Those individuals who happen to lack those attributes have either not developed them yet (embryos, fetuses, infants), or have illnesses or disabilities that impede their expression. But those attributes are unique to the human species, they are uniquely part of our natures. That some have not developed, or have lost, them, is irrelevant...[Emphasis in original]

Smith then makes what might seem like a slight argumentative mis-step by bringing practical considerations into the essentialist debate. That is to say, he says that what he calls human exceptionalism must especially be upheld because of the consequences of rejecting it, in particular the return to "the pernicious thinking of eugenics and social Darwinism." One might say that the consequences of rejecting it are irrelevant to whether it is true. But I wouldn't accuse Smith of a mis-step. He understands that this is about the nature of man qua man, and he re-emphasizes this when he mentions "he uniqueness of human beings as the known universe’s only moral species." I think the point about the consequences of rejecting human exceptionalism can be thought of in terms of being given a chance to think again when we find our ideology leading us somewhere horrible. As I pointed out here, there needs to be such a thing as an ethical reductio for ideology. And I think that is Smith's point about consequences.

Meanwhile, color me essentialist when it comes to human beings. Nominalism about mankind is one kind of nominalism you must refuse

Comments (104)

Lydia,

Hills and mountains (and Hugh Grant movies) are not substantial forms; so nominalism with respect to them would not suggest either that there are no substantial forms or that we cannot know them. However, nominalism with respect to things we take to be substantial forms, like birds and trees and rocks and angels and God, would necessarily undermine any essentialism with respect human beings.

It seems to me that if the reality and knowability of substantial being cannot be defended universally it cannot be defended in any particular case either.

Speaking for myself, I'm not sure I've ever explicitly thought of myself as taking things to be "substantial forms." It's not a category I would normally use. I don't think of myself as a Thomist or an Aristotelian but as a modernist. However, if being a thoroughgoing modernist means one has to be a nominalist about human beings (or for that matter about angels), then I'll probably get a request to turn in my modernist membership card as soon as the word gets out on this one.

Rocks...Hmmm. Why does one have to be an essentialist about rocks? That was more or less what my sapphire-ruby example was getting at.

If man is a rational animal, then any individual which is not a rational animal is not a man, i.e., a human being. But you say that man is a rational animal and that some men are not rational animals. This doesn't make any sense, unless you're equivocating with the term rational animal.

The problem is you can't say that man is a rational animal, declare rational animal to be his species, declare that there should be no nominalism with regard to this -- then start explaining your reasoning like a modernist.

This is only true if man is ONLY a rational animal. If man is a rational animal and a rational soul, if we lose the rational animal we may yet retain the man by virtue of the soul if the soul is the dominating principle in the definition.

If a man is a rational animal I don't think that a rational soul separate from the body would be a man. It would be a person; and it would be the same person it was before. But a man requires a body. Otherwise "animal" would not be part of his essence.

George R., I think our difference here is terminological. I suppose that you would want to say of a dog with a genetic defect causing only three legs to form that he was still "a four-legged animal." By that you would mean that he belongs to a species the nature of which it is to have four legs when fully developed and not suffering privation. I would probably be inclined to say that he is not four-legged, meaning by that merely that he doesn't instantiate, in literal and actual fact and in his individual case, four-leggedness. But he's still a member of a species the nature of which it is to have four legs, etc. I don't think whether you say, "This dog is a four-legged animal" is crucial so long as you have the essence thing right. Similarly, if a person has a terrible privation from birth such that his upper cerebral cortex never develops, there is a sense in which one can say that he is "not rational"--just exactly the sense in which the three-legged dog is not four-legged. But just as the dog is a member of a four-legged species, so the anencephalic infant is a member of a rational species. Whether you refer to the infant as a "rational animal" will probably depend on the same principle by which you choose or don't choose to refer to the dog as a four-legged animal.

Biological species do not have natures. Biological species do not have essences. This has been quite firmly settled by Darwin and his successors. "Human being" is sometimes used as a term for something other than the biological species homo sapiens,* and if you wish to play around with such other uses, that would be another matter, but if you wish to claim that you mean the biological species and claim it has an essence, you will indeed have to turn in your modernist membership card. As well as committing yourself to what's definitely false, of course. And, of course, if you don't mean the biological species, it would be a good idea to be clear about that, as this is an area where confusion is rather common.

* I don't think Kant means the biological species when he says "Mensch," for example.

A biological species is a population bound together by common ancestry and fairly reliable ability to interbreed; boundaries between species are rather vaguely set by difficulty of interbreeding (I'm oversimplifying, of course). Such a population can have characteristics which are common or uncommon; it can have average values in measurable traits, and the population can show great or small variation in those traits. But an individual member of the population is a member because of the common ancestors it shares with other members, and because the members taken together constitute a plausible population to group together, not because the individual member shares the same nature or any essential traits with any other members. There are, again, no such natures, no such essential traits, or at least none that have anything to do with biological species membership. Really.

Biological species do not have natures. Biological species do not have essences. This has been quite firmly settled by Darwin and his successors.

Ha! That's a good one, Aaron!

Or anyway, it would have been if that's what you had meant to write. But of course, it must have been a typo. What you must have meant is rather something like: "This has been quite firmly presupposed by Darwin and his successors." Because that (unlike your original statement) would be true.

Lydia,

Re: rubies and the like, see pp. 164-6 of Oderberg's Real Essentialism. Anyone interested in essentialism about inorganic phenomena in general will find much on the subject in the same book. And anyone interested in good old fashioned Aristotelian biological essentialism should read chapters 8-9.

If we assume that naturalism is true, that may be a good way to think about species. Or maybe not. Either way, if instead we know on independent grounds that naturalism is false, then we have to look at the question from another angle. In particular, if we know on independent metaphysical grounds that Aristotelian essentialism is true, then we have every reason to think there is much more to species than the sort of thing you mention.

The point, though, is that what "the science" tells us is always interpreted through some metaphysical framework, a framework it cannot itself establish. Naturalism is just one metaphysical framework among others. It might be true; and then again, it might not be. But it has not been (because it cannot be) established on empirical scientific grounds. Lots of people seem to think otherwise, but they're just wrong. Really.

The problem with "rocks" is that it needs distinctions. "Animal" is simple because there is a simple definition--an organism endowed with sensation--which applies equally well to all animal species.

Rocks, however, are sometimes like hills and mountains: little more than mineral aggregates, only marginally more substantial than heaps or mounds. Your garden variety multi-mineral hodgepodge rock does not really have an essence. Diamonds, however, are different because they are a definite material (carbon) arranged in a definite crystalline structure. It's not really hard to grasp the essence of a diamond whereby we can recognize any member of the species and distinguish it from other rocks. (Diamonds are less substantial than animals, however, because they have less intrinsic unity and individuality.) A diamond is not merely an accidental aggregated hodgepodge of elements which happen to bonded into a lump, but it has a real nature.

I don't know enough about rubies and sapphires to know whether they are really specifically different or not, but they may well not really be so. Doesn't matter: diamonds are specifically different from coal and carbon is specifically different from gold--although no non-organic physical nature has as much substantiality as organic ones.

On the other point, I concur that it is stupid to say that Darwin has "settled" that species do not have natures, considering that a species is by the Darwinian defined as "a population bound together by common ancestry and fairly reliable ability to interbreed". None of us essentialists would ever define a nature as a population or, more broadly, a class, and doing so shows how different our premises are.

Ed, you cannot know that Aristotelian essentialism is true, no matter what metaphysical grounds you might wish to appeal to, for the simple reason that you can't know what isn't true. However, it would go too far afield to explain here why Darwin was right and Aristotle wrong; my only point here is that you really do have to disagree with Darwin to say what Lydia says here, and not about some small point of detail about which subsequent biologists have learned better. You have to disagree with a central point which all serious subsequent biologists thought Darwin got right, at the very foundation of every branch of their discipline. I realize that some, like you, are willing to do that, but it does involve, at the very least, losing one's modernist membership card, as Lydia put it. It seemed as if she wished to find some way to avoid doing that.

One thing we do seem to agree about is what metaphysics is, though you don't seem to recognize how completely we agree about that. Talking to you reminds me of why I am in such sympathy with the old positivists, who also knew their enemy far better than one might have thought from the superficial presentations and refutations their views have gotten for so long (thankfully that seems to be improving; particularly the recent Carnap scholarship has gotten much better).

Perhaps you should learn a lesson from Heidegger. He seems to have realized that Carnap understood him, and that they simply disagreed, rather than assuming like so many of his fans that Carnap couldn't have understood him (perhaps Heidegger's fans assumed this because so often they couldn't understand him?) I will grant Heidegger that we modernists have turned our backs on being, and on essence, and a whole lot of other nonsense besides. But we have good reasons for having done so, call them metaphysical grounds if you like, but please stop calling them presuppositions as if we have never questioned or thought about them; nothing could be further from the truth.

"A human being is something which must be overcome." I think that's why Carnap chose to speak of "overcoming" metaphysics; he knew his Nietzsche.

Francis, of course what I meant is that you can't know P when P isn't true, not that you can't know P isn't true when P isn't true; this is not only obvious from context, but the only interpretation that's not as strained and implausible as a theologian's reading of a Bible passage.

Ed, how do you square essential with something like the gulls around the arctic, where you have continuous interbreeding and no obvious break anywhere, but where the gulls from opposite sides of the continuum are can't interbreed and look like separate species? (I haven't read up on this case in a while, so I'm citing this from memory, but I think I'm roughly right about it.)

Also re empirical science and metaphysics: Aristotle's mechanics certainly had a metaphysical basis, as did his distinction between heavenly matter and earthly matter. But empirical science led to the abandonment of both, in the sense that, if scientists had continued to hold these metaphysical assumptions, progress would have been blocked.

"The problem with "rocks" is that it needs distinctions. "Animal" is simple because there is a simple definition--an organism endowed with sensation--which applies equally well to all animal species."

This seems very odd to me, and is certainly not the definition used in modern biology. What if we found out that crickets seem to lack sensations, while oak trees have them? Would that make crickets non-animals, and oak trees animals? And, I don't see any reason to think plants in general don't have sensations, given recent research demonstrating how they recognize conspecifics, drive off predators, favor their own offspring, and so on. They just do these things much more slowly than animals do them, so it's been hard for us to perceive just how active they really are.

Frank,
I am a living picture and partner of God. So are you. I am a descendant of Adam, with all the consequences, good and bad, that entails. So are you. It's got nothing to do with the extra-biblical categories of "being," "essence" and "nature." At least Christ Himself seems not to think so. I'm with Him.

Aaron, you need to get the bee out of your bonnet here if you intend to have a productive discussion. I interpreted your comment the exact same way as Francis did, and not because I was straining, but because at a quick blush that was the most natural interpretation that sprang to mind. Your clarification makes it clear that you meant something else, but you really need to get off the high dudgeon about it because it wasn't at all "obvious" that that's what you meant, and in fact the syntax gives no clue one way or another. Something tells me you're the one who is "straining"--that is, to get in a dig at theologians, the Bible, and whatever else deserves your undisguised scorn.

According to Francis, if "human beings are not beings such that they ought to be rational in order to properly flourish," it would follow that one is not required to accept any arguments on the grounds that one would be irrational in not doing so. I would respond that we are rationally required to accept rational arguments regardless of what kind of beings we are. That's just trivial. Of course, there is some implication that Francis thinks rationality needs to be justified by something beyond rationality. Again, trivially, this cannot be rationally required, so I cannot see how Francis can be doing more than making a joke in attempting to provide a rational argument to such a conclusion.

I think you believe everything that I, in the post, call "essentialism" about human beings. Let's try it: You believe that there is something special *about being a member of the human species* and that that something special is true even of the least member, the most disabled member, of the human species. The Bible calls this being made in the image of God. And it is true of the anencephalic infant as it is true of you and me. The nominalist (as I use the term in the main post) holds rather that the human species is just a sort of heap of individuals with varying capacities. These individuals are statistically likely to be able to exercise the capacities the nominalist values, but if some individual isn't--mark this--then he loses his value in the nominalist's eyes. Hence Terri Schiavo, or the anencephalic infant, or the person with advanced dementia, is disposable according to the Peter Singer-like nominalist. There's nothing special *about the species qua species*.

Insofar as you reject that view, you are what I in the main post call an essentialist about the human species. You don't have to be a hylemorphist. I'm not.

Lydia,
The descendants of Adam are the pictures and partners of God, and that's what the Bible calls being in His image and likeness. Jesus is the express image of the Father. He is the perfect embodiment of what it means to be in the image of God. Some of Adam's descendants are more like Jesus than are others, and therefore more in the image of God than are others. They are better pictures and partners.

I'm not interested in the taxonomy and methods of the Greeks when it comes to these issues. It's not a matter of essences or of essentialism (or of nominalism, for that matter). I'm not going down that path. It seems unwise and unwarranted to me. For theology, that entire framework, and the dissensions and divisions it has spawned, ought to be junked.

"I would respond that we are rationally required to accept rational arguments regardless of what kind of beings we are."

Who is the "we"? Those that share the same nature that requires that they accept rational arguments?

Regardless of the capricious stipulation of certain analytic philosophers, first philosophy cannot not be done, whether aggressively or passive aggressively. And I think you demonstrate this by smuggling in, by your use of "we," the very metaphysics you say cannot be done.

please stop calling them presuppositions as if we have never questioned or thought about them; nothing could be further from the truth.

It depends on the naturalist, Aaron. What I object to are people who confidently dismiss (say) the traditional arguments for God's existence or for dualism, while giving every evidence that they have no understanding of what the key writers really said, and in particular no understanding of the underlying metaphysical issues at play in the dispute. And there are many prominent naturalists who are guilty of this. For example, it is almost universally true in atheistic writing on the Five Ways; even J. L. Mackie (who I respect very much, and whose work is about as good as atheist argumentation gets) doesn't understand the metaphysics underlying the Third Way (the one Thomistic argument he devotes much attention to), as I show in my book Aquinas. And it is almost universally true of contemporary naturalistic treatments of substance dualism -- my recent posts on Churchland provide just one illustration of this.

Are there naturalists who have a more adequate grasp of what the great non-naturalists of the past have said? Sure, but it seems to me that they are for the most part either of a bygone generation (e.g. Sellars), or contemporary historians of philosophy who are read only by other historians and not by those engaging in naturalist polemic per se. And the fact that some naturalist somewhere does know what he is talking about doesn't excuse Dennett, Churchland, Rey, et al. from shooting off their mouths without knowing what they are talking about.

Francis, of course what I meant is that you can't know P when P isn't true, not that you can't know P isn't true when P isn't true; this is not only obvious from context, but the only interpretation that's not as strained and implausible as a theologian's reading of a Bible passage.

From an Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) point of view, while metaphyscial questions cannot be collapsed into empirical scientific ones, they aren't hermeticaly sealed off from them either. But part of the problem in discussions like this is that A-T carves up the methodological territory in a very different way than moderns tend to do. For example, metaphysics is itself a kind of science, but not because it is merely the most abstract end of physical science, as a modern scientism willing to countenance some metaphysics might have it. Furthermore, much of what it is convenient these days to describe as a "metaphysical" dispute between A-T and the moderns would not be described that way by A-T itself, but rather as a dispute over "philosophy of nature," which is regarded as an intermediate branch of inquiry between metaphysics on the one hand and physical science on the other. Also, before determining whether physical science really refuted some metaphyscial claim, would have been retarded by it, etc., we need to be very careful to distinguish the empirical element from the metaphysical element of the claim in question. For example, to show that the material world did not in fact carve up the way Aristotle assumed (celestial vs. terrestrial matter, etc.) simply doesn't show that there is no such thing as a subtstantial form or final cause. That sort of crude non sequitur is committed all the time, but it is a crude non sequitur all the same.

Now, in the case at hand, whether things in general have essences is a metaphyscial question, but the Aristotelian "yes" answer to that question is not something arrived at a priori. But neither is it a "probabilistic hypothesis." It is rather taken to be the only way to make sense of the way the empiricial world actually is. All the same, while we can know on general metaphysical grounds that salt and seagulls have essences, knowing precisely what those essences are is something that can be done only via detailed empirical study. We're not going to learn it from our armchairs. And no A-T theorist holds that a metaphysically informed biological or mineralogical classification is going to turn out to correspond neatly to the way untutored common sense would classify things.

So, re: gulls, trees, rocks, rubies, etc., the answer is: It depends. We'd need to go through each case in detail. There's no general a priori A-T principle that's going to tell us, and the theory does not imply that there should be. It is silly, then, to pretend (as people so often do) that they can whip out some individual example -- "What about mountains? What about viruses?" etc. -- as if it were something no A-T theorist had ever heard of and as if it sufficed to bring the whole structure tumbling down. People who really want to understand A-T essentialism need to read something more than combox comments on it, something that sets out the position in systematic detail and then applies it to all sorts of individual cases. As I've said, Oderberg's Real Essentialism is the best thing currently in print on this.

Francis, the "we" is irrelevant. Accepting rational arguments is rationally required. That is trivial. As the balance of my post indicated, my point is that while there are many things this triviality doesn't tell us (such as whether anyone cares what's rationally required, and whether there's any reason someone who didn't care ought to start caring), your approach doesn't help at all with these further questions. Self-evidently, if what's needed is a motivation from outside rationality for why rationality should be accepted, a rational argument, such as you attempted to provide, isn't what's needed. It isn't outside rationality. And if nothing outside rationality is needed, I continue to insist I'm right where you are. Being rational is rational (duh!); no need to invoke rational natures to establish what couldn't possibly be false under any circumstance.

I am more interested in grasp of the issues than in grasp of texts, and there, Ed, I think you continue to be quite unreasonably dismissive. Apparently Sellars gets points for his anti-empiricism; do you not think it's even conceivable that somebody might be pro-empiricism for reasons other than ignorance? Dennett has a lot more to say than you give him credit for. Paul Churchland is a shallow thinker, sure, (hardly any naturalist would say otherwise), but he's also a big student of Feyerabend (did you even know that?) Churchland seems to have at least been able to sense that Feyerabend was on to something, and while of course I don't endorse all or even most of what Feyerabend had to say, I can't see how he could be accused of ignoring the deeper issues that seem to concern you. Of course the naturalists who prefer not to be represented by Paul Churchland mostly have a high opinion of Patricia, which I share; there, my respect is based on her excellent attention to technical details. I would say that sometimes such focus on minute technical issues reveals much more than one might have thought (of course I'd think that, good Carnapian that I am); a point you seem to insist on for Aristotle and Aquinas, while refusing to apply it to your naturalistic foes.

?? What do you have in mind, exactly? For example, when Dennett tosses off the stupid "What caused God?" objection to the cosmological argument in Breaking the Spell and then dismisses the very idea of examining what serious proponents of the argument have actually said as mere "ingenious nitpicking about the meaning of 'cause,'" he shows himself to be unwilling to engage the issues themselves, not merely unwilling to engage in some antiquarian textual study. Such examples could be multiplied. Where exactly is this attention to texts rather than issues that you complain of?

Apparently Sellars gets points for his anti-empiricism;

No, Sellars gets points because he actually knew something about Aristotelianism and explicitly responds to it. Indeed, he even took Mortimer Adler seriously enough to offer a thoughtful reply to him. In other words, he avoided the appeal to stupid cliches and to which ideas and thinkers are to be considered "professionally respectable" that dominates too much contemporary philosophy.

Dennett has a lot more to say than you give him credit for.

Like what, exactly? These vague, sweeping complaints that I'm not being fair to naturalists are getting a little tiresome, Aaron. Has Dennett somewhere presented a deep analysis of hylemorphism, or of the First Way, or of Cartesian dualism? Because if he has, I've missed it. On the other hand, I do know that he has a lot of stupid stuff to say about "vitalism," "What caused God?," "ectoplasm," etc.

Or do you mean that he has important things to say about topics other than religion? Well, yes, I know that. See e.g. my treatment of him in Philosophy of Mind or my long discussion of his position on intentionality in The Last Superstition.

So, what haven't I given him credit for, exactly?

[Churchland is] also a big student of Feyerabend (did you even know that?)

Uh, yeah I did, but thanks for the lesson. Anyway, what's your point? That Feyerabend knew a lot about the history of philosophy? That's certainly true, and it would be nice of some of it rubbed off on Churchland, because (as I've shown elsewhere) when Churchland sounds off even on Descartes and Co. (let alone the Scholastics) he sounds like an ignoramus.

a point you seem to insist on for Aristotle and Aquinas, while refusing to apply it to your naturalistic foes.

I'm still waiting for examples. Where are all these naturalists with this deep knowledge of classical philosophy, Scholasticism, etc. who do not attack straw men or Everyman's History cliches and have such powerful and well thought out grounds for "overcoming" this grand metaphyscial tradition they've mastered? All I keep hearing is about how Dennett has a lot to offer, Churchland knows his Feyerabend, etc.

It seems to me you're annoyed that I appear to be dismissing all naturalists as such without a fair hearing. But that is simply not remotely the case. I have very frequently cited many naturalists for whom I have great respect and regard as worthy opponents (e.g. Fodor, Chomsky, McGinn, Levine, G. Strawson, Chalmers, Searle, Nagel, Armstrong, Smart, Mackie, Q. Smith, just off the top of my head) as well as contemporary philosophers who wouldn't be caught dead supporting most of the views I would take but who nevertheless in various ways have a more penetrating grasp of the debate between the Scholastics and the moderns than other contemporary philosophers do and from whose work I have profited (e.g. Cartwright, Bird, Ellis, Ariew, Des Chene and other scholars of early modern phil). Not to mention golden oldies like Russell, Sellars, Carnap, Schlick, et al. for whom I also have respect and regard as much more serious opponents than their successors. (Partly because you won't find in them the brain-dead and uninformed "Oh come on, materialism is just so obvious" attitude you find among so many contemporary philosophers.)

Moreover, as you know, I was for much of my career a confirmed naturalist and atheist myself. Nor in some superficial rah rah way, since I was well aware of the problems with the shallow naturalisms of the Churchlands and Dennetts of the world but was convinced they could be overcome. If I've since changed my mind, then, you know, maybe I had some actual philosophical reasons for doing so, no?

That's not my point. My point is that why are human beings required to accept rational arguments?

For example, you dismiss my query as trivial. But why would you do that? Is it that you expect a cluster of reasons for my position that a being of the sort you are is entitled?

Consider the bully who thinks that might makes right. His victim, rightfully, believes that the bully's authority to order him around does not arise from the bully's superior strength and nerve. But rather, from the adequacy of the bully's reasons if in fact he had any. But he the bully does not possess such reasons. Thus, the reason why we think the bully is a bully and not a philosopher (though the two may in fact overlap), is that on the matter of one person's authority over another it is reason, and not might, that does the work that justifies. That is, the normative expectation that one ought to provide non-trivial reasons in order to sway your philosophical trajectory tells me what sort of being you really think you are. It is the same being that shares the nature as me. You are a rational animal.

I am a living picture and partner of God. So are you. I am a descendant of Adam, with all the consequences, good and bad, that entails. So are you. It's got nothing to do with the extra-biblical categories of "being," "essence" and "nature." At least Christ Himself seems not to think so. I'm with Him.

Preach it, brother.

Gimme that ol' time religion, which goes all the way back to Aristotle. :-)

I'm still waiting for examples. Where are all these naturalists with this deep knowledge of classical philosophy....

Bingo!

For me, when I started to write in ethics and political philosophy in the 1990s I was shocked at the historical poverty of these fields, especially in their applied versions. Take, for example, the concept of "potential." This gets bandied-about in discussions of abortion and personhood, and yet very few analytic philosophers use it in a precise way. So, Tooley compares the fetus' potential for certain functions with a cat that could be injected with a drug that results in person-making properties. When I first read that I was floored. I thought, does he not know the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic potential, potency and potential, etc.? Then I read JJ Thomson's famous violinist argument. Again, I was floored. I thought to myself, "She's not assuming the prolifer's view of the fetus' personhood, as she claims. What she is assuming is that the fetus is a Hobbsian person, a hostile rival to the goods possessed by her mother. But that's not the prolife view of personhood. In fact, Thomson is subtly begging the question by assuming the very sort of metaphysical view of the person that she already believes about adults. The prolife view is not that at all: it's the view that human beings are members of a community that includes parents, children, and families, and these institutional arrangements are connected ontologically to the sort of beings we are. That is, I have a different role as parent than I do as stranger." If you have any background in classical philosophy and/or the history of philosophy, it is shocking to read how philosophers like Dworkin, Rawls, and Thomson deal with ethical and legal questions. Don't get me wrong, these are very smart people from whom I learned a lot. In fact, I have much fun lecturing on Thomson's wonderfully well-crafted essay on the decline of causality in torts law. But my point is that philosophical training has morphed in the past twenty years to a type of ahistorical skill set that does not take seriously the philosophical and theological traditions that gave rise to philosophy in the first place.

In case anyone is interested, a very good book on how "A-T" natural philosophy--essentialism, substantial form, etc.--can be harmonized with modern natural science (with copious detailed examples from a wide range of sciences from quantum physics to biology) is William Wallace's The Modeling of Nature.

"For example, to show that the material world did not in fact carve up the way Aristotle assumed (celestial vs. terrestrial matter, etc.) simply doesn't show that there is no such thing as a subtstantial form or final cause. That sort of crude non sequitur is committed all the time, but it is a crude non sequitur all the same."

Well, Ed, I don't know if you're addressing that to me, but I certainly didn't imply that! I was just noting that at times empirical findings do seem to impinge on our metaphysics. I think Quine was on the right track here with "Two Dogmas."

"I would respond that we are rationally required to accept rational arguments regardless of what kind of beings we are."

I'm unclear as to what this could possibly mean. Are rocks and trees rationally required to accept rational arguments?

So far as I know, the only (physical) beings on this planet who are rationally required to accept rational arguments are the rational animals. Do you know of other rational animals besides human beings?

Lydia,
The three legged dog is a weak example of an essentialist view. Dogs are typically mobile, and three legged dogs are awkwardly mobile. Even if they were immobile, they may (or may not) have other qualities of loyalty and obedience that would still count as "dogginess." For the example to work, you should ask if an animal where mobility is the essence of its being would still have inherent dignity, like a horse. Most people who work with horses would say no, even though it is a member of the horse species.

Dr. Feser,For example, to show that the material world did not in fact carve up the way Aristotle assumed (celestial vs. terrestrial matter, etc.) simply doesn't show that there is no such thing as a subtstantial form or final cause.

There are a couple of problems with final causes. The most important being they are not always final. Second, they assume normative conditions. Third, in the case of theology, they can be constantly abstracted and expanded until you have a result with no apparent relation to the causal chain.

A hard-headed analytic philosopher was just saying to me recently how "Two Dogmas" looks worse every time he reads it. I had to agree.

Step2, I'm not sure I follow your point. Is your point that a creature lacks "inherent dignity" if it loses the ability to exercise some capacity that is truly essential to it? So a horse has "inherent dignity" when it is mobile but not if it loses its leg and is immobilized? If that's what you're saying, I would reply first of all that I'm chary of attributing "inherent dignity" to non-human animals anyway, since part of the point of my whole position is the _distinction_ between man and (other) animals. It depends on how much one would be loading into the idea of "inherent dignity." Second of all, a living horse that has lost a leg is still a horse. I myself do not believe that euthanising a horse is wrong, so it would be legitimate, in my view, to euthanize the horse, but that isn't because it has somehow lost its nature by losing the leg. The legitimacy of putting down the horse depends on other things like the fact that it is not a person. Finally, if the end-point of your comment here is that when a human being loses the ability to think rationally and consciously he loses "inherent dignity," because he can have that only by actually _instantiating_ so important a human ability, then that just sort of begs the question, doesn't it? Obviously, the very point at issue between us is whether or not there is a human nature which all members of a species share, including those suffering from severe privation. Just as the immobile horse is still a horse, so the anencephalic infant is still a human being. The ethical implications of that are, of course, very profound on my view.

A dog is essentially a four-legged animal whether he has four legs, eight legs, or no legs. The reason why a four-legged animal may not have four legs and still be essentially a four-legged animal is because while essence is always a principle of the subsistent thing, it is not the only principle. There is also the material principle, which is capable of undergoing alteration -- and mutilation. Thus, a thing may be materially deprived of what it is essentially.

Human beings, however, who are essentially rational animals, can never be materially deprived of rationality, because matter and the intellect do not coincide. And since they can never be materially deprived of their rationality, and since they can never be essentially deprived of their rationality (because essences do not change) they retain their rationality no matter what.

I really don't see how this is ending up being so obscure. A tree or a rock which fails to accept rational arguments isn't being very rational, is it? So yes, rocks and trees are rationally required to accept rational arguments. I would, of course, be pretty surprised to encounter a tree or a rock which had actually accepted a rational argument, but there is no entailment from what's rationally required to what is actually done, for humans or rocks or trees.

My main point, however, is certainly not that the triviality of "it's rational to be rational" answers any questions or solves any problems. Rather, it's that presenting a rational argument purporting to establish that humans have a rational nature does not answer any questions or solve any problems not already answered or solved by the triviality. I'm not altogether certain what problems Francis means to be solving, but for example he asks why, if humans don't have a rational nature, I should accept or expect anyone else to accept a rational argument. I don't know the answer to that, but I also don't know why, if humans do have a rational nature, I should accept or expect anyone else to accept a rational argument. A rational nature can't be a guarantee of rationality or compulsion to rationality, or Francis couldn't possibly claim that humans have such things. So if there were a rational nature, it'd be possible to ignore it. Why shouldn't I? That question doesn't seem any easier with a rational nature than the corresponding question of "why not be irrational?" seems to be if there's no rational nature. The rational nature doesn't seem to do any work.

To me, this is at the heart of naturalism. We expect our theories to do work, and non-natural theories seem to us to be unconvincing assurances that the work is being done when it really isn't. Aristotle's theories can't do some of the work they were intended to do (final causes don't help us understand why we see the kinds of animals that we do; Darwin gives us that story), and furthermore many of us don't think they do very well at other work that science has not taken over (final causes produce unappealing ethical doctrine, since what's ultimately final is death), and finally, perhaps most importantly, we naturalists (or at least those like me) think it's important not to confuse observation and description with evaluation, all the more so because the two do in fact have so many subtle connections and are so easily confused.

To me, this is at the heart of naturalism. We expect our theories to do work, and non-natural theories seem to us to be unconvincing assurances that the work is being done when it really isn't.

Aaron, do you agree that when a theory explicitly _doesn't_ work, it is erroneous? That is to say, when a theory predicts outcome A to happen in an experiment, and instead the contrary, Not-A, actually happens, then the theory is proven invalid. This is the other side of the coin for a theory "working", yes?

But another meaning for a theory "working" is that the results from holding it get me what I want out of life. Often these meanings coincide, since the theory being INvalid will often mean I can't get what I want when I use that theory. But (unless essentialism is true), there is no absolute one-to-one correspondence between a theory being true and a theory getting me what I want out of life, for lots and lots of reasons (See Dr. Feser's recent discussions.) There is certainly a more than merely off-hand chance that for some individual person, thinking SOME erroneous theory will actually increase his total happiness in life. For him, then, this theory works, even though it is invalid.

If it makes no sense to call man a rational animal, then for THAT person noted above, it is fine, appropriate, good, and in all other ways to be applauded that he continue to think that invalid theory. Even if you could prove the theory is invalid in a thousand separate ways, that would not necessarily have any bearing on the fact that he can be happier with the invalid theory than with knowing it to be false: his false theory WORKS. And so, if man is not a rational animal, there is no rational basis for arguing

ABOUT
ANYTHING

at all.

Every time you argue further, you prove that rationality matters because of the relation between the mind and the world, and that relation is common and understood because men by nature have that relation: rationality.

(final causes don't help us understand why we see the kinds of animals that we do; Darwin gives us that story), and furthermore many of us don't think they do very well at other work that science has not taken over (final causes produce unappealing ethical doctrine, since what's ultimately final is death), and finally, perhaps most importantly, we naturalists...think it's important not to confuse observation and description with evaluation, all the more so because the two do in fact have so many subtle connections and are so easily confused.

Aaron, you walked into Lydia's thread with completely out-of-the-blue claims, not backed up by actual argument but just laid out as if they were so obviously true that every person with a brain knows them and should be agreeing with them. But even if those claims happened to be both true in themselves, and adequately proven in some book or journal or for professionals, the fact is that the claims are not self-evident and need support; at this web-site they need much more definite support and more clarification than a mere tossing off of a few conclusions. Your referencing them in the manner you did, as if OBVIOUSLY true, is hardly a worthwhile discussion tactic. Unless your purpose (oh, shoot, did I say that? You can't have a rational purpose if you don't have a rational nature, silly me) in the discussion is to display disagreement without any idea of arguing the case.

You did the same again in the last paragraph that contained the portion I cited. It isn't an argument to say that final causes produce unappealing ethical doctrine, since what's ultimately final is death) , it is just a bald, unsupported claim that you lay out. Well, if you are going to simply claim it without argument, then none of us who don't accept the claim need to argue the case, either.

Frankly, you would have been a lot more cogent in your first response above to Lydia to have simply said: "I don't agree with your starting point, so I disagree with the rest" and leave it at that. All the rest of your comments are pretty much a smoke screen for not bothering to present arguments that make the conclusions that you cite in mere contradiction to the position that natures are real. At least in the context here, making a claim that This has been quite firmly settled by Darwin and his successors. without arguing the case is pretty much poking Lydia and the rest of us in the eye and daring us to put up our dukes, like a backyard bully. Lot's of rational discussion involved in that!

Tony, I love that about the card. I'll be grinning about that one all day.

Aaron, the bit about final causes and death was just like a bad pun. If I'm not responding to your assertions, it's because it seems pointless to me to respond to such bare assertions that seem to come without any argument.

You are right that I have not provided much by way of detail in this thread. I was conversing with people who claim to understand naturalism so well that they can clearly see flaws which are completely hidden from its proponents, so I posted as if I could take for granted a thorough understanding of what the various forms of the modern scientific view actually involve. Of course, I didn't actually believe the claims to understand naturalism, so I suppose it was disingenuous to post as if I did. I am attempting to track down a copy of Ed's new book, since he so often reports that he's explained everything there, and have some vague plan to post a more detailed discussion of Ed's various issues to my own blog.

Yes, I'm assuming it was a pun, since Aaron surely knows what "final" means in the expression "final causality." At the same time, I'm having trouble seeing what the point of the pun is. Is there supposed to be an argument lurking there somewhere? My favorite bit, though, is this:

final causes produce unappealing ethical doctrine

Well, thanks for the honesty, Aaron. "I reject your metaphysics, because I don't like the moral implications." And here I thought it was we theological types who were the ones who tailored our philosophical conclusions to fit our prejudices! Funny old world.

But I've seen the same mask slip on other naturalists. "Your unappealing, reactionary moral views are without rational foundation, because they rest on bad metaphysics. And the metaphysics is no good, because it leads to unappealing reactionary moral views." The merry-go-round just keeps on spinnin'...

Of course, I didn't actually believe the claims to understand naturalism,

That was obvious from the get go, Aaron, but I'm still waiting to hear what it is exactly I've misunderstood. Unless it was just "But don't you guys see, everybody accepts naturalism these days. Get with it!"

You seem to be flirting with nominalism yourself in this footnote from your recent essay on property rights:

6 As Foot notes, questions about the evolutionary origin of a species can largely be set
aside here, for the point of an Aristotelian categorical is to describe a species as it actually
exists at a point in time, whatever its origins. One might still wonder, however (as Gerald
Gaus did in commenting on an earlier version of this essay), whether the existence of such
borderline cases as evolutionary transitional forms, which would seem to be indeterminate
as to their essence, casts doubt on biological essentialism. But it does not. As David Oderberg
points out, characterizing such forms as indeterminate presupposes a contrast with forms
which are not indeterminate(such as the evolutionary ancestors and descendants of the
forms in question), and thus does not entail that there are no biological essences at all.Furthermore, given the general arguments in favor of classical essentialism, there is no
reason to doubt that even such borderline cases do, in fact, have essences of their own,
different from the essences of the forms with which we are contrasting them. See David S.
Oderberg, Real Essentialism (London: Routledge, 2007), chapter 9, for a detailed discussion
of this issue. [emphasis mine]

Are you suggesting here that essences in living things can be altered and evolve? That doesn't seem possible, unless their essences are only nominal.

I think we've seen reruns of this episode at least a dozen times here at W4. A typical analytic philosopher stumbles across this blog and is shocked by what he reads. He cannot believe that there are still intelligent people who disagree with naturalism. After all, none of the professors at his top-50 university who only read other professors from top-50 universities think this way! Haven't these reactionaries heard about MODERN SCIENCE?! So, our brave analytic philosopher barges into the combox and declares that naturalism is rationally obligatory in light of modern science, sneering and telling us so with no small amount of condescension. But then something funny happens. When it comes time to actually back this declaration up with some arguments, our bold analytic philosopher finds himself strangely unable to produce any. Instead, he just begs the hell out of the questions at issue and asserts that all legitimate explanations are scientific explanations, or that Darwin has "shown" us to be wrong, or that our moral beliefs are mean-spirited and weird, or whatever. Wash, rinse, and repeat. The real question is: why do these people continue to waste our time? It's like they simply cannot control their desire to tell us just how much they scorn our beliefs and how utterly outrageous it is that we refuse to get with the program...

The fact that some ancestors of this dog here were not themselves dogs does not mean that there is no what-it-is-to-be-a-dog, instantiated in this dog. Rover's essence cannot "be altered and evolve" so long as he remains a dog. When he dies, or if someone turns him into a genetically-modified cyborg monkey-dog, his essence will certainly have been changed.

Now the reason evolution initially bothered essentialists is because since Aristotle it has been assumed that essences generate like essences: dogs generate dogs, not-dogs do not generate dogs. And this is true--unless something happens somewhere in the course of transmission to change the essence of what is generated. Aristotle assumes that any such alteration would produce a monster. But Darwinism tries to show that "monsters" can actually have better essences than their ancestors, and that the new "monstrous" kind will survive better than, and so outlast, its "normal" ancestor-kind. The trick is to find the mechanism for producing good monsters rather than, well, monstrous ones.

The fact that some ancestors of this dog here were not themselves dogs does not mean that there is no what-it-is-to-be-a-dog, instantiated in this dog.

Michael,

Here’s the problem.

If the essence of the progenitor is the only principle that causes the essence of the offspring, then the essence of the offspring can never be different from the essence of the progenitor, nor different from that of any of those things that share the same essence with the progenitor, nor different from that of any of the offspring produced by any of those who share the same essence. This is because of two self-evident principles: 1)Like produces like. 2) Identical effects will always follow from identical causes.

Now let’s admit another principle into the determination of essence, a material principle such as genetic make-up, so that both essence and genes combine to produce the essence of the offspring. The result will be that the essence of each individual will always be different from that of all other individuals; for the genetic make-up of every individual is different, and diverse effects always follow from diverse causes. It would necessarily follow then that all universal essences attached to living things would be merely nominal.

Are you suggesting here that essences in living things can be altered and evolve?

No. That makes no sense, since an essence just is what it is. The point was rather that the question of what an organism's essence is and the question of where the organism came from are two separate questions. Hence, even if we allow that the organism arose in some evolutionary way, it wouldn't follow that it has no essence.

If the essence of the progenitor is the only principle that causes the essence of the offspring...

Yes, "if," but precisely for that reason, any plausible evolutionary account is (at least implicitly) going to have to deny this premise. It's going to have to hold instead that there are further aspects of the cause of the offspring -- dormant genetic information in the progenitor, information deriving from the surrounding environment, etc. -- that in combination produces an offspring with a nature different from that of the progenitor.

Now let’s admit another principle into the determination of essence, a material principle such as genetic make-up, so that both essence and genes combine to produce the essence of the offspring. The result will be that the essence of each individual will always be different from that of all other individuals; for the genetic make-up of every individual is different, and diverse effects always follow from diverse causes. It would necessarily follow then that all universal essences attached to living things would be merely nominal.

George, this doesn't follow at all. For individual instantiations of an essence certainly are different from one another, and (part of) this difference certainly is determined by differences in their genes. Part of what makes me as a man different from other men is the differences between our equally human genes. Certain kinds of Thomists might want to point to precisely this as an explanation of human individuality (as something closer to a Scotist I would be more inclined to also accept a formal haecceitas, but that's a different conversation).

As you say, like produces like, and identical causes produce identical effects. The theory of evolution is based on the assumption that in critical instances there are not identical causes in the transmission of an essence, i.e. in the disparate cases where dog begets dog and where some non-dog or other somehow gives rise to dog.

It's not the case then that the essence of the progenitor is the only principle that causes the essence of the offspring, because something else is required for the duplication of form than form, namely properly disposed matter.

The fact that there are genetic monsters at all is enough to show that like does not always beget like, precisely because there is interference with the proper material. Evolutionary theory just claims that not all of these cases must result in something worse rather than in something better than the original.

Yes, and what it is is a philosopher's fiction that often gets in the way of understanding the real world outside our heads -- and the God who made it.

Are you guys ever gonna stop accusing others of asserting rather than arguing while you yourselves just go on positing imaginary things as real, things like essences and substances, for example?

Most of the educated world, rightly, just doesn't buy it any more. Jesus, apparently, never did buy it. After all, since He comes later in time than Aristotle (and Plato), He certainly could have made use of such an explanatory rubric had He thought it wise. For some reason (I suppose a very good one), He declined. Of course, it could be that Jesus and the world just don't understand the wisdom and utility of your approach.

Or maybe you're wrong. But at any rate, if you haven't done so before, do practice trying to explain the world without recourse to such inventions. Start from square one if need be. It can be done. Indeed it has been done -- most notably by the Mind Himself.

Mr Bauman, do you have any evidence for this other than the argument from silence? Because there sure are a huge range of things relevant to philosophy about which the limited information in the gospels gives us no information. And as someone pointed out earlier, Christian theology since the earliest councils and even earlier apologist saints (i.e. Justin Martyr) have had no problem with appealing to philosophical categories to explain the careful distinctions needed in expressing orthodox Christian belief. Would you sweep 19 centuries of Christian tradition away in your antipathy to Aristotle? If so then I have no use for your kind of Christianity.

you yourselves just go on positing imaginary things as real, things like essences and substances, for example?

A substance is a thing which can change in certain ways while remaining itself and which has certain things about it or belonging to it which are incidental to its being itself. For instance I am a white man; I could become red (say by sitting out in the sun) and still be myself. I am sitting but might as well be standing, since sitting is not intrinsic to what and who I am. Is this imaginary? I don't think so.

I wonder if you would even agree to the distinction between matter and form? I suppose not. After all "most of the educated world" doesn't know anything about it and hasn't thought about it much. I've noticed, however, that such people start sounding absurd and incoherent really quick when certain subjects come up.

George, this doesn't follow at all. For individual instantiations of an essence certainly are different from one another, and (part of) this difference certainly is determined by differences in their genes. Part of what makes me as a man different from other men is the differences between our equally human genes.

Yes, I know that Michael. I know that the material principle goes into causing the individual. My argument is that it does not go into causing the essence. If you say it does, you are a nominalist. There's no way to avoid it.

Michael Bauman, I've already given you _my_ reasons for believing that human beings have a nature. I've even talked about being made in the image of God. In fact, I would say that that's a biblical way of referring to such a thing as a human nature. Why get so hung up on the terminology? Is it just that you like to rag on philosophers, or what?

I'm not sure if you've completely grasped my argument. If the material principle prevents the reproduction of the essence, then the essence is not reproduced and a "monster" is formed instead.

The question is, is the "monster" always only a mutilated version of its progenitor with the same essence as it, but defective? Or is it possible that it can be something new, capable of its own new kind of flourishing? If so, then this is not to say that essences evolve or change, but that new essences come into being (in the temporal sphere, not in the absolute sense).

I'm not saying for my own part that this is the case--I'm no biologist--only that this is what Darwinists would say happens, granted that there are essences.

I know that the material principle goes into causing the individual. My argument is that it does not go into causing the essence.

My argument is that the material principle can go into causing an individual with a different essence than its progenitor. As to "causing the essence," I'm not sure what you mean by that. To my mind nothing causes an essence except the mind of God (and that only in a certain respect) and perhaps in a more limited way the mind of man in causing artificial essences or the essences of artifacts, to the extent that we might want to grant at least some artifacts some limited kind of substantiality (and I think I would).

LydiaIs your point that a creature lacks "inherent dignity" if it loses the ability to exercise some capacity that is truly essential to it?

Yes. There may be other types of moral consideration that are circumstantially appropriate, but if essence means anything, the inability to express that essence is nontrivial to its objective status. To take Dr. Feser's example, a rubber ball that has been melted is no longer a rubber ball, it still has the same material substance but the form has changed.

Obviously, the very point at issue between us is whether or not there is a human nature which all members of a species share, including those suffering from severe privation.

Membership in the species does not override the particular situation of severe privation, which is what I was trying to illustrate. Since you've shown a fondness for horses in the past, and I am very sympathetic to viewing them as noble animals, it doesn't seem such a stretch to think they deserve some level of dignified treatment.

I think horses certainly do deserve dignified treatment. I also think there's a serious moral difference between them and humans, which is one reason why it is morally permissible to euthanize them. I certainly don't think euthanasia _just is_ "dignified treatment" in the case of humans.

I also think Ed's whole point (or one of them) about the melted rubber ball is that it isn't a ball anymore. A human being suffering from severe dementia, on the other hand, is still a human being.

Step2, I think your point inadvertently confused the distinction between natures and natural forms on the one hand, and the quasi-natures and quasi-forms that come from our minds in artificial constructs on the other. A ball is a "ball" because it has been made round, and round shape makes it good for throwing, catching, and so on. Which are all artificial. The roundness is imposed by art, and it is imposed on account of an end in every sense extrinsic to the stuff that is natural, i.e. a glop of rubber. Hence we speak of the form of the ball only by an equivocation on "form", or, at most, an analogy. But certainly not univocally with the notion of "form" as used on a natural being. Saying that it still has the same material substance but the form has changed can only be said because the "form" at issue is the quasi-form of art, not that of nature.

The horse is of course a natural being, whose form is natural, and has nothing to do with the art of man.

The horse is of course a natural being, whose form is natural, and has nothing to do with the art of man.

This statement is, of course, empirically false. Horses, as we know them, like modern cats and dogs, are a product of human-devised breeding. And, just like horses, the vast diversity of our species has changed for the past several thousand years, in fact, that change is accelerating.

"Rational" is simply response appropriate to stimuli. If i hold up a red pen and ask you "what is this?" you will almost certainly answer "a red pen". Likewise, if I run at a feral cat yelling it will probably run away. A rational response, i.e. one that is appropriate to the stimuli. Cats simply have different rationalities than humans, and different humans have different types of rationalities.

your account of rationality is absurd. Anything which claims that doing a mathematical proof and chasing a piece of string are equally informed by reason is prima facie absurd.

As for the equine form, your point really just reinforces what I said earlier about the temporal origins of essences as opposed to their real instantiation in an individual. However modern horses came to be, it is not a result of human art that horses beget horses, but rather a result of nature.

Lydia,
I don't consider dementia to be a severe loss of rationality, since it mainly affects the memory. My understanding of rationality is that it involves higher brain processes and the ability for abstract thinking. When you look at all the similarities to human behavior found in the animal kingdom, they have territoriality, social hierarchy, organized violence, camouflage, basic reciprocity, tribal empathy, even a primitive theory of mind. The thing other animals don't have is our ability for abstract thinking, which allows us another dimension and unique vantage on those behaviors.

The import of my use of the phrase "severe dementia" was that it went beyond memory loss and certainly affected abstract thinking ability. But I know your position, Step2. I could just as easily have said, "A person unable to engage in abstract thinking is still a human being," and that would certainly express my position.

The problem I see with your position, Step2, is that you consider a person unable entirely to engage in rational thinking (e.g., a person accurately diagnosed as being in a PVS) to be a "merely physical" being and hence, kill-able, which is itself a denial of the whole notion of a single human nature and value that extends to all members of the kind. I have never understood why those who take your position think that my position involves a denial of the _severity_ and _tragedy_ of the privation suffered by such people. Why should it be necessary to hold that such people can legitimately be killed as an expression of sympathy for their tragic loss of higher cognitive functions? And in the case of an early unborn child, the situation is even odder. Why do I need to express my sense of the importance of a child's going on to develop naturally so that he can think abstractly by holding that he may be legitimately killed in the womb prior to being capable of thinking abstractly? It has never made any sense to me.

My argument is that the material principle can go into causing an individual with a different essence than its progenitor. As to "causing the essence," I'm not sure what you mean by that. To my mind nothing causes an essence except the mind of God (and that only in a certain respect) and perhaps in a more limited way the mind of man in causing artificial essences or the essences of artifacts, to the extent that we might want to grant at least some artifacts some limited kind of substantiality (and I think I would).

Michael,

It seems to me that you do not quite grasp the concept of substantial being.

Artifacts do not have essences, because the essences of subsistent things are substantial forms. Artifacts, on the other hand, are accidental forms. Accidental forms are modifications of quantity, which are found in the genus of quality, which is a category of accidental being. It is important to understand that accidental forms inform quantity (another category of accidental being) not substance.

Now genetic make-up is also in the genus of quality; it is an accidental form similar to artifacts. It informs the material quantity of the thing, not the thing itself. The thing itself is informed by the substantial form, i.e. the essence of the thing. The composite of substantial form and primary matter constitutes substantial being, which alone is being in an unqualified sense. Thus, substantial being is ontologically prior to all other categories of being, including quantity and quality.

Moreover, substantial being is completely imperceptible to the senses. In other words, all forms perceived by the senses are accidental forms and belong to the categories of accidental being. As a consequence, modern science, which is almost completely “sensist” in philosophical outlook, has taken accidental being to be the only true being, and has relegated substantial being to the realm of myth.

As a result of this, hardly anyone in the world today takes the concept of substantial being seriously; and the confusion in distinguishing between substantial and accidental being is universal.

It seems to me that you do not quite grasp the concept of substantial being.

If by this you mean that I do not quite toe the Thomistic line, then I grant it. But saying something other than Thomism (which is surely what you mean by doctrinaire Aristotelianism) is not the same thing as not getting it. And I haven't claimed to be a Thomist in a very long time; as I said above, I would consider myself closer to Scotism.

I have a number of problems with your very familiar Thomistic account. It seems to me that its doctrine of substance or substantial being is simplistic and doesn't allow for gradations in substantiality, which I believe does not comport well with reality. Aristotle's biological orientation leads him and his expositors to sound at times as though the only real substances are organisms which I find very problematic. While this is not the place to expound my own ideas, I will try to give some idea of where I would take issue with your statements.

genetic make-up is . . . an accidental form similar to artifacts

This seems false to me. It is an "accident" (I would call it a determination) to humanity in the sense that to be a man is not to have this man's genes; but my genetic make-up is not accidental to me. My "genetic make-up" is not a particular gene or set of genes as they exist in my cells--those are indeed quantitative modifications of the material substrate--but a complex formality governed by my individual substantial form, though not identical with it.

The thing itself is informed by the substantial form, i.e. the essence of the thing.

I deny that the essence is identical with the substantial form, if by "essence" you mean such a thing as "humanity". I hold that the essence needs further determination before being individuated, and as I deny that matter is in any sense the principle of individuation I hold that there much be some further formal restriction of the essence to individuality, a haecceitas, which stands to the specific essence as the species does to the genus, before you can have a substantial form. In other words I deny that Socrates is merely a composite of "humanity" and matter signed with quantity, and hold that Socrates' substantial form is a complex individual formality composed of "Socrateity" and "humanity".

The composite of substantial form and primary matter constitutes substantial being

I would say proximate matter, not primary matter, because matter must be properly disposed by a preceding formality if it is to be able to enter into composition with the substantial form. I deny that the primary substantial form alone is the only formality in a substance, for many reasons which I will not go into here.

Again, no need to tell me this is not orthodox Thomism--I know. But that is not at all an admission that my opinion is a result of modern confusion. Rather it's another example of a claim I've made before, namely that a Scotistic metaphysics can do a better job of incorporating the complexities of modern science than a Thomistic one can.

your account of rationality is absurd. Anything which claims that doing a mathematical proof and chasing a piece of string are equally informed by reason is prima facie absurd.

I would point out that large numbers of human beings, maybe as much as 90 percent of the world's population, are incapable of comprehending mathematical proofs. If you're equating Reason with the ability to operate mathematical proofs then you are saying that 90 percent* of homo sapiens, at this point that's all we can admit now, are not rational. Now we can do a little mischievous inversion of Aristotle's assertion that man, a human being, is a rational animal; i.e. rationality is the essence of man. By this line of reasoning only 10 percent of homo sapiens can be correctly labeled "human", as most people simply do not possess the essence of Reason, at least if your criteria is being able to comprehend abstract math.

Do you really want to go there? BTW, I am willing to go there, if you are, and I think we all know where "there" is.

I would also point out that you engage a neat little sleigh-of-hand by inserting "Reason" where I used the term "rationality". No one disputes the latter, well, okay, there are the feminist and post-colonialist nutters, but it's the former about which so many are skeptical.

* I'm a multiple-SDer on the right side of the Bell Curve, but I grew up in a poor, let's say, um, vibrant community. I can assure the types that frequent discussions such as this that they have no comprehension just how little reasoning takes place in many, probably most, individuals of the species. As a private math tutor for a few years, teaching from simple algebra through honors calc, I would estimate that only 20 percent of my students had the mental capacity to really comprehend math. Sure, they could plug in a formula, provided they'd been drilled on it in the past 24 hours, but that's not comprehending math. These kids were disproportionately from private prep schools and their parents paid very good sums of money for this tutoring, so we're not talk an "at risk" population.

it is not a result of human art that horses beget horses, but rather a result of nature.

There are a vast diversity of horses, and that vast diversity is the product of thousands of years of human artifice, or rather many different human artifices. BTW, we may be, mostly, on the same side here, as I look up the comment section.

You seem to be appealing to a unitary "human nature" as the basis for equal moral dignity of all homo sapiens, and you identify this fundamental nature as "rationality". I would submit that this is a very poor, and dangerous, method of founding such notions of moral worth, as our species is a vast diversity of very different natures. In my experience, large numbers of individuals, probably the vast majority are incapable of rationality at the time of inception, and many consciously reject rationality, on top of that.

The psychic unity of the species is cooked. Time to stick a fork in it.

I would ground moral worth of an individual in their ability to contribute to and be a member in good standing of some greater social unit, one which contains some rational individuals. Of course, this is an explicitly anti-Universalist exposition of moral dignity, which is probably not what Thomists and neo-Aristotelians are seeking. Such anti-Universalism only acknowledges that individuals have moral worth within a particular social context, such as their church, community, nation-state, etc.

Lydia,
While I do think there is something tragic about cases of PVS, I don't view that as my main consideration. I also view a crippled horse as tragic, but that isn't my main consideration either. I really do think it has lost (or not yet developed) something essential. It is a legitimate criticism of my position to say that it is uncharitable, that there are or could be other reasons for preserving a non-rational dependent human life. I've also admitted before, but not recently, that the Future Like Ours argument is the one argument that I find difficult in the abortion debate. If I gave the impression that I'm perfectly content with everything about my position or that I have no sympathy at all for yours, that impression is mistaken. That is why I have supported a group that gives single women the training necessary to be working mothers or helps them with adoption.

If you're equating Reason with the ability to operate mathematical proofs

Well, I'm tempted to retort that Reason is equated with following an argument better than this, but I'll refrain.

"Doing a mathematical proof" was offered as a clear instance of rational activity, not as a definition, just as a cat chasing a string was offered as a clear instance of irrational (perhaps un-rational would be better) activity. Perhaps you should take a look at Plato's Meno before confusing instances and definitions again, or before ever talking about philosophy again, for that matter.

I would estimate that only 20 percent of my students had the mental capacity to really comprehend math.

Well, math is hard. Many advanced cultures did not develop a sophisticated notion of mathematical proof, much less attempt to teach it to all their children. Again, it was an example of rational activity, not a criterion. Even quite retarded people or small children do more reasoning--inferences, deductions, etc.--all the time than the most "intelligent" animal. Often they're wrong, either because their premises are wrong or their enthymemes go screwy without them noticing it, but they're doing it.

I grew up in a poor, let's say, um, vibrant community. I can assure the types that frequent discussions such as this that they have no comprehension just how little reasoning takes place in many, probably most, individuals of the species

Hey, I grew up in a ghetto too! I was a white minority throughout my childhood, and was the first person in my family to get a college degree, and I'm well aware of how ignorant and stupid most people are, so . . .

. . . well, so nothing. Because it's irrelevant. As I said, even very ignorant and stupid people do more reasoning every day than the best-trained dolphin or ape on its best day.

Anyway, your grasp of basic argumentation aside, your moral views, as expressed to Lydia, are so repugnant--treating human beings as means rather than ends, and means not even for other human beings but for "greater social units" stocked with the self-appointed rational elite who decide how best to use the irrational dreck--that I seriously doubt that it's worth debating with you any more.

Calling arguments absurd, without rigorous demonstration, and merely asserting that one's opponent cannot follow an argument are not good modes of presenting a position. For starters, the distinction between a definition and an instance is purely one of utility and artifice. Definitions are nominal things that we use to equate things that are alike and distinguish things that are different, given some criteria/criterion. We use definitions to give structure to how we operate in the world, and we derive these from a vast array of instances and the two an inseparable. And you talk about definitions, which is just providing a methodical criteria for distinction, but your one given distinction of a cat chasing a string versus solving a math proof got us to where we are now.

The problem is that this thread is about grounding universal human dignity in some essence of rationality, one which seems to simply be assumed. Can you give me an example of something "rational" that is exhibited by all human beings equally? I can't. Seriously. I've sat here racking my brains and anything universal is simply instinctual, although this is not to say that all instincts are universal. The problem, I would submit, is that your lines of reasoning demonstrate very little about the world and how distinguish between things. It's not that I'm not following an argument, but that there is not much of an argument to follow.

Oh, and what you call morally repugnant is simply reality.* Kant was simply wrong about morality being centered around human beings as ends in themselves. I am clearly not an end in myself, and my relation to politics in America manifestly demonstrates this reality. The empirical fact of morality has never been grounded in rationally-originated ideals about how the world ought to exist and how human beings ought to treat each other. No, morality, from the Latin mores, simply meaning custom or customary, and simply describes the set(s) of rules that tend to obligate individuals in various situations. So, there was a Roman morality, a Greek morality, an Indian morality, and, yes, even a Nazi morality**, had the regime survived long enough to entrench itself into common culture, which it, thankfully, did not. I would consider myself a sworn enemy of such a morality, had it survived to the present, but that opposition would not negate the reality that such customs conform to the substance of morality.

* I know, I tend to pepper theoretical discussions with personal asides, but they do tend to provide instances for my theoretical structure. Even though we lived in a ghetto, my family trekked each Sunday and Wednesday to a nice shiny conservative, suburban church. A fair percentage of those "christian" girls in the youth group ended up getting pregnant by some ner-do-well from their public school, keeping the child, and, of course, have lived off my taxes and orderly-lived life in the intervening years. So, the reality is that I am treated as a means to an end, and not as an end in myself. So, a man can work hard, obey all the social rules, put himself through school, and then be forced to pay for the whelplings of the rutting sow next door who spreads her thighs for any yob with a swagger, a gold chain and a little pot. Again, our species has *never* operated from the ideal that individuals are ends in themselves. It's simply at odds with our manifest nature.

** I would also point out that Hitler lied about the Jews, but if what he'd said had been true the Holocaust would have been justified. Part of homo sapien teleology is clearly that of killing other homo sapiens. Yep, it's in our nature, as are a vast array of other instincts.

Calling arguments absurd, without rigorous demonstration, and merely asserting that one's opponent cannot follow an argument are not good modes of presenting a position.

Excuse me, but I did not at first call an argument absurd, but the assertion that doing a mathematical proof (which requires understanding and thinking) and chasing a piece of string are equally rational activities. That statement is absurd, because rational activity involves thinking and understanding by definition.

For starters, the distinction between a definition and an instance is purely one of utility and artifice.

No they're not. Hey, I can assert things too!

The difference is that a definition is universal and may apply to many different instances, while and instance is a singular and applies to nothing but itself, although it instantiates its definition. This is why people have known since Aristotle that there can be no definitions of singular objects.

your one given distinction of a cat chasing a string versus solving a math proof got us to where we are now.

No, I'm pretty sure it was your ignorance of basic logic.

Oh, and what you call morally repugnant is simply reality.

You're consistently confusing what people actually think and do with what they ought to think and do. Rookie mistake. Here's an example: Again, our species has *never* operated from the ideal that individuals are ends in themselves. See, that means that our species (which by the way does not operate or otherwise act; only individuals do that) has never been morally good. Does that surprise anyone, or prove that men ought not to be good?

Also, I find it odd that you'd cite Plato, and then excoriate me for alluding to different classes of people based on different levels of rationality. I mean, Plato pretty much patented that shtick. What you're ignoring is that another part of human nature is to arrange into hierarchically social units. It just tends to *happen*, and where it does not you get social chaos; no hierarchy means chaos. I refer you to Edmund Burke on that score.

Let's take the issue of illegitimate children, which IIRC is approaching 40 percent in America. Why has that happened? Because the cultural elites have bailed on making the distinction between illegitimate and legitimate births. This had filtered down even into conservative Christian circles as long as thirty years ago; my parents left a church because the daughter of an elder got pregnant and openly raised the child in the church as a "single mother". What would cause a reversal on the subject? It would require a sustained, vigorous effort on the part of the cultural elites to reinstill the distinction between, i.e. *definition of*, illegitimate and legitimate and to assert social sanctions against the latter and for the former. But it's not going to happen with the cultural elites we have today, and so you're going to see the illegitimacy rate continue to rise.

So our illegitimacy rate continues to rise, the stock of marriageable men continues to languish under the current welfare state, and the people lose themselves in the insignificant baubles of hedonistic sense experience. And all you can do is bleat about treating people as ends in themselves. Is it any wonder that no one takes up existence as heavy burden? We're inhabiting a civilization just waiting to die, and all you can do is bleat about the inherent human dignity of a indolent, sense-addled rutting sow and her whelplings.

Also, I find it odd that you'd cite Plato, and then excoriate me for alluding to different classes of people based on different levels of rationality. I mean, Plato pretty much patented that shtick.

Hey, another irrelevant point! Plato was right on logic and wrong on politics. But I wasn't talking about politics. Whew! Crisis averted.

What you're ignoring is that another part of human nature is to arrange into hierarchically social units.

I'm only ignoring it insofar as it is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Let's take the issue of illegitimate children

Why on earth would we do that when you spend two paragraphs on something completely irrelevant to our discussion and not one word responding to me?

Well, when the other party begins to spiral off into irrelevant tangents and I start getting sarcastic, that usually means it's time for the argument to stop. Sullivan over and out. Thanks for the fun, W4!

[George R., that doesn't mean I'm bailing on you, if you want to reply.]

Excuse me, but I did not at first call an argument absurd, but the assertion that doing a mathematical proof (which requires understanding and thinking) and chasing a piece of string are equally rational activities.

The two activities are rational relative to the two different natures of the two different organisms. I don't need to say that they are *equally* rational, because the term "equally" is unnecessary. You're the one positing rationality as some byproduct of a metaphysical substance, Reason, or at least that's certainly how it appears.

The difference is that a definition is universal and may apply to many different instances ... there can be no definitions of singular objects.

Sure, a definition is universal to the extent that it is posited as universal, but that is simply a means to an end. Individuals and group posit various definitions as universal to organize their reality and to better operate within it. In my experience, all universals taken to their logical conclusions are pure dogma, even though we, myself included, often use language in a local setting that sounds universal.

No, I'm pretty sure it was your ignorance of basic logic.

Lol. Look, you're the one implying that there is some sort of category of "Reason" that strictly pertains to all homo sapiens, and that does not pertain to any non homo sapiens. Given the absences of any other definitions in your writing, the only possible definition is between chasing strings and solving math proofs. It's not that I can't follow logic. The issue is that you refuse to provide an empirically valid distinction between rational and a-rational that we can examine using evidence.

You're consistently confusing what people actually think and do with what they ought to think and do. Rookie mistake. Here's an example: Again, our species has *never* operated from the ideal that individuals are ends in themselves. See, that means that our species (which by the way does not operate or otherwise act; only individuals do that) has never been morally good.

The distinction between ought and is appears to be closing, other than within the realm of pure logic. Prohibitions against the naturalistic fallacy, ruthlessly applied, take us into the realm of the moralistic fallacy, which is just as logically fallacious. I've occasionally had fun debating that all claims about human society are logically fallacious, because every claim, at some point, either seems to commit the moralistic or naturalistic fallacy. Is does not logically imply ought. But the reverse is equally true: you cannot infer can from ought.

When you insert the term "ideal" into your argument you are implying that ideals are a requirement for morality. I don't see why any such ideals are necessary for morality, and it seems that you are just adding superfluous variables. People, by their very nature, act morally, albeit there is a vast array of different, and often competing, moralities. Morality is a fact of human behavior and history, and the fact that human beings have never based morality on treating each individual as an end simply means that this is not the actual basis of morality. Hell, I'd argue that morality is much more central to our species than is rationality, as the former is probably more strongly rooted in instinct. Kant wanted to give self-aware human reason pride of place in the development of morality, but his project seems to have been designed to secure against empirical examination.

Finally, I see no reason why there must be any one definition of "the good". Many different notions of good evolve in the vast array of different social situations, and many of them are in direct conflict with each other for supremacy.

Well, when the other party begins to spiral off into irrelevant tangents

Okay, I suppose this assertion makes sense given that you want to completely remove all discussion of human dignity and morality from the world of empirical evidence. You're correct that I refuse to engage in a discussion of pure metaphysics, unrelated to the world of existence. Metaphysics is your dogmatic premise, so any discussion that attempts to incorporate evidence is an "irrelevant tangent".

The bottom line is that founding human dignity and morality on rationality is an article of faith. It is no different than claiming that Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead.

The two activities are rational relative to the two different natures of the two different organisms.

You're equivocating on the word "rational". Everyone else in this thread has been using "rational" to mean "powers, potentialities, natures, activities, etc., which involve understanding and/or thinking". You are using rational to mean "congruent with a thing's nature" [so I suppose you accept that there are natures?] or even "able to be given a rational account of". This is known as the fallacy of equivocation.

You're the one positing rationality as some byproduct of a metaphysical substance, Reason

I never said byproduct, and I think you don't know what either "metaphysical" or "substance" means.

Sure, a definition is universal to the extent that it is posited as universal, but that is simply a means to an end. Individuals and group posit various definitions as universal to organize their reality and to better operate within it. In my experience, all universals taken to their logical conclusions are pure dogma, even though we, myself included, often use language in a local setting that sounds universal.

Earlier you seemed to accept that there are natures, but the above paragraph implies that there are no natures. It's also full of assumptions that I reject. So there.

Look, you're the one implying that there is some sort of category of "Reason" that strictly pertains to all homo sapiens, and that does not pertain to any non homo sapiens.

I never said any such thing. I said that men have a rational nature allowing them (in general) to perform rational activities which are natural to them, involving understanding and thinking, and that animals do not. "Reason" is not a category, and I certainly do not wish to confine it to men, since I believe in God and angels.

Given the absences of any other definitions in your writing, the only possible definition is between chasing strings and solving math proofs.

That makes no sense whatsoever.

It's not that I can't follow logic. The issue is that you refuse to provide an empirically valid distinction between rational and a-rational that we can examine using evidence.

I think it's that you can't follow logic. Rational activity involves understanding and thinking and a-rational activity does not. Ta-da!

When you insert the term "ideal" into your argument you are implying that ideals are a requirement for morality.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure the only time I used the word "idea" was when I was quoting you.

Anyway, you continue to make the same assumption that "morality" is a human construct which can be determined by empirically examining what men actually do. I strenuously reject the assumption that one can find what one ought to do by making some sort of statistical evaluation of what others have in fact done. You also seem to assume that Kant was attempting to provide, like Nietzsche, a genealogy of morals, rather than a rational and philosophical foundation for a morality which already existed. I think you're wrong about that too.

I think anyone who carefully compares your Scotist position to my Thomist one will be able to see how Duns Scotus paved the way for nominalism, whereas Thomas avoided it.

I think you're wrong about this. Scotus was a more thorough-going realist than Thomas was.

Therefore, universal substantial forms do not exist, and essences are merely conceptual. Nominalism.

Thomas himself holds that a universal per se exists only in the mind. Scotus goes him one better and holds that there are common natures, in themselves neither universal nor singular, which are instantiated as individual in singulars, and as universal in the mind. This is not nominalism at all but, as I said, arguably more realist than Thomism.

But proximate matter already has a substantial form; and all modifications to substances are accidental. Therefore, all generated substantial forms are really accidental forms. Nominalism.

Aha, but this is false if you reject that there can be only one substantial form in a substance, rather than a hierarchical nest of such forms with the primary form unifying and supervening over all. This does not make substantial forms accidental forms. What you say is just what Thomas accuses the Franciscan tradition of holding (he attributes it to Avicebron), but he was wrong about that and so are you.

You may or may not possibly be interested in looking at the standard work on the plurality of forms controversy, Richard de Mediavilla et la controverse sur la pluralité des formes, by Zavalloni. This doctrine is by no means unique to Scotus in the scholastic tradition.

Socrates' substantial form is a complex individual formality composed of "Socrateity" and "humanity". . . Therefore, universal substantial forms do not exist, and essences are merely conceptual. Nominalism.

Presumably you will agree that "humanity" is composed of "animality" and "rationality". But you affirm that rationality and humanity are real and not merely nominal. Presumably you will also affirm that the genus "animal" is real and not merely nominal. But the reality of the species is no more vitiated by the individual difference than the reality of the genus is vitiated by the specific difference. Ergo, etc.

You are using rational to mean "congruent with a thing's nature" [so I suppose you accept that there are natures?] ... Earlier you seemed to accept that there are natures, but the above paragraph implies that there are no natures.

I have repeatedly made specific reference to human natures, multiple not singular, and that different moralities are products of these different natures. For example, it's clear that there are a significant minority of males out there who are not capable of monogamy and who are also skilled at convincing women to join them in this non-monogamy. It is the morality of the rest of us to put them down like rabid dogs and to use the power of the state to suppress their offspring. Different types of life have different moralities and, often, have conflicting moralities vying for supremacy.

Cute, and completely circular. Understanding explains rational, and rational explains understanding, and if only everything could just be explained by this sort of hand-waving. This manifest circularity is why I'm asking you to provide a theoretical framework that can explain "rational" and that can be examined using empirical evidence, as, I would wager, the vast majority of brain activity occurring in most homo sapiens is not of the "understanding" variety. My challenge is that there is no clear defining line between rational and a-rational in your argument, and that under many conceptions of rationality most human activity is a-rational. So, I would point out that if most human activity is a-rational it would probably be strategically foolish to found morality on rationality.

You seem to be operating under the, false, assumption that most human activity is one of understanding. Or is it that people *should* be operating from a place of understanding? Have you even bothered to consider the possibility that most people simply aren't capable of operating out of self-aware understanding?

Hmm, I'm pretty sure the only time I used the word "idea" was when I was quoting you.

There's a subtle difference between idea and ideal. Ideas have a physical existence in the human brain, whereas, ideals usually take the form of some sort of absolute imperative, ala Kant's reasoning of why lying is always wrong. All ideals are ideas but the reverse is not true.

Anyway, you continue to make the same assumption that "morality" is a human construct which can be determined by empirically examining what men actually do. I strenuously reject the assumption that one can find what one ought to do by making some sort of statistical evaluation of what others have in fact done. You also seem to assume that Kant was attempting to provide, like Nietzsche, a genealogy of morals, rather than a rational and philosophical foundation for a morality which already existed. I think you're wrong about that too.

Well, it depends on what you mean by construct. If you mean consciously designed and implemented, then emphatically not. Morality is simply something that arises over time within a particular community allowing people greater security of their possessions and certainty of the consequences of their actions. So, I am not assuming anything but acknowledging the facts of the case, that human beings adopt morality by fitting themselves within a particular social framework. It's why slavery was not immoral 150 years ago but is immoral now, why segregation was not immoral 60 years ago but is immoral now, and why the conquest of North America was not theft (theft is moral concept and conquest is not).

As for Kant, he was attempting to reconcile an idealist, universal moral kernel with the vast changing array of lived historical morality. I fault Kant for not attempting develop a genealogy of morals and insisting on a universal morality derived from reason.

Somewhat off-topic, but I'm curious of something. I see you posting now and then coming from a scotist position rather than a thomist one. Can you recommend any good books for an introduction to scotist thought? I'm enjoying learning about Aquinas, Aristotle, etc, but I'd love to add another scholastic to my reading list.

The answer to your objection would probably take a long time, so instead I will make some brief points to try to point us in the right direction.

First of all, forms are not composed of other forms; for they are one and indivisible. Therefore, humanity is not composed of “animality” and “rationality.” Those are merely parts of its formal definition; for man has an essence that is defined by the terms “rational” and “animal.”

What you are attempting to do is take this essence, which men have, and make it part of the formal definition of the substantial form. Therefore, man will no longer have an essence, but rather a substantial form the definition which will contain the term “humanity.”

I never said this, and so there is no "manifest contradiction". All such activities as mathematical proofs, etc., etc., involve thinking, activities such as string-chasing do not. That's not circular.

You seem to be operating under the, false, assumption that most human activity is one of understanding.

I've given you no reason to think that. I think that humans do perform acts of understanding, which implies that some human acts are rational acts; from this one cannot infer that most or all are. In any case the fact that men some times act irrationally is no more a proof that man has no rational nature than the fact that men spend a third of their lives lying horizontally proves that man's nature does not include the upright posture, in contrast to most animals.

As for the rest of it, I have no further response. You can't argue logically and in any case you've said you don't want to argue metaphysics, so there it is.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with some of your claims and leave it at that. This thread doesn't seem to be the right place to discuss the matter. I'd suggest you look into the scholastic controversy on this subject: it may at least be of some interest.

In addition to what is said in the post and the comments, I might also mention The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus, by Antoine Vos, which came out a couple of years ago. It's a little nutty in places but still quite valuable.

Not to sound like a jerk (but there's no way to avoid it in comboxes), but you seem pretty sure of yourself. For instance, you write "Morality is simply something that arises over time within a particular community allowing people greater security of their possessions and certainty of the consequences of their actions." It gives the impression that this was a discovery that we've figured out, like evolutionary theory, and we should just be informed of this.

Don't get me wrong, there's not necessarily anything wrong with being sure of yourself, even with regard to fairly counterintuitive views. A lot of the people who write on this blog seem fairly sure of themselves too, but I was wondering how you came to your judgment about the nature of morality. Was it by reading metaethics, or just reflecting on it yourself, or what?

Aha, but this is false if you reject that there can be only one substantial form in a substance, rather than a hierarchical nest of such forms with the primary form unifying and supervening over all. This does not make substantial forms accidental forms.

Michael, it seems to me that either the substance is one integral unity with one substantial form that determines that unity, or it is a plurality as such and the unity is only superficial or an appearance. If the substance is integrally one, then the other (lesser) "substantial forms" cannot be substantial forms in the fullest sense of the word, since the form is the principle by which the matter is one unified thing. Then the other lesser forms are only substantial forms in an attenuated sense.

For example, when you have salt sitting in the salt shaker, it has the substantial form that makes it a crystal of sodium chloride, with all the properties that attend sodium chloride. When you ingest the salt and it enters your body and incorporated into _you_, it still retains much of the properties of sodium chloride (or else it wouldn't do the body much good) but it cannot have the proper substantial form of salt since it is now incorporated as (part of) _you_, and you are one being. Therefore, while it might make sense to speak of virtual presence of the form of sodium chloride (since it still operates as - or has the power of operating as - sodium chloride operates), it doesn't make sense to speak of the salt as retaining its own substantial form properly as such.

Either that, or you have to lose the notion that the substantial form is the unifying principle in virtue of which the matter is one being. But that involves a whole host of problems.

At least that's my off-hand understanding. I have never studied the Scotus position directly, so I want to be careful about what I say about it. I don't know whether your position loses any of its force if you modify it to say a hierarchical nest of such virtual forms with the substantial form unifying and supervening over all

I would step in and answer Asher for you, but frankly he is so wrong on so many points that I really feel that there is no use to it. I don't want to get started.

Isn't that the truth. I always feel like I should apologize to everyone I argue with online. I meant what I said, but I didn't mean it to sound like that!

Tony, you said

it seems to me that either the substance is one integral unity with one substantial form that determines that unity, or it is a plurality as such and the unity is only superficial or an appearance.

Now it seems to me that the case is more complicated than that. As I hinted before, in my opinion one should not just say that something is either a substance or isn't: we ought to recognize grades of substantiality. It's clear that a heap of pebbles isn't one substance, but it's less clear with your garden-variety rock, and even less clear with a single diamond. Our metaphysics needs to take account of the fact that there are different gradations of integrity and unity. A rock really is one thing, but it's not one in the sense that I am one.

If the substance is integrally one, then the other (lesser) "substantial forms" cannot be substantial forms in the fullest sense of the word, since the form is the principle by which the matter is one unified thing. Then the other lesser forms are only substantial forms in an attenuated sense.

I think I would agree with this. The lower forms are subsumed into the higher. The highest form is what gives the substance, including all its subordinate forms, unity in the absolute sense. This is impossible if, as George asserts, a form must necessarily be absolutely simple. But the alternative is to say that a thing ceases properly speaking to exist when it becomes a part, and begins to exist again when it ceases to be a part, and I think this is unacceptable.

Consider a case some scholastics actually talk about, that of human organs. This is a useful one because the fact that we have organ transplants now make the case so clear. Under the Thomist position a heart does not have its own form. As Aristotle says, a severed hand or the hand of a corpse is like the hand of a statue, not really a hand at all. But this is not really the case. The fact that the heart can be removed from the body--separated entirely from the substantial form of the man it belongs to--and placed into another body, to come under the governance of another man's substantial form--while retaining real numerical identity, seems to me to prove demonstrably that the heart has its own integrity, its own unity, its own proper operation and telos, and so forth, distinct from that of the man to whom it belongs. It is a thing which was once part of this substance and now part of that substance, but remains itself. Of course its nature is to be a part

Now you will say that the heart isn't even like the salt, it never had any substantiality except as a human part, this part was produced under the governance of the substantial form of the man, and when separated from a man permanently it will be a mere lump of flesh. This is true. Of course its nature is to be a part, and if it ceases being a part for very long it will cease being a heart at all. I'm not claiming that the heart is a substance as a man is a substance. But I am claiming that it is substantial in an important sense. The heart, even when it's in the cooler and not a part of any man, is for some period of time a real human heart and not a lump of flesh. It's not just a bit of signate matter which is transferred over from body to body, but also something with its own enduring (call it quasi- or virtual if you like) substantial form. Not enduring or substantial enough to make it a real bona fide substance as the man is a substance, but enough to call into question the presumption of the simplicity of all form. For surely a man's substantial form includes the shape, operation, and end of the heart, which, as I have argued, has its own kind of unity and identity. But just as surely it is not identical with them.

In my opinion Thomist metaphysics has a hard time accounting for everything that really happens in an organ transplant. George said earlier, Scotist metaphysics is more accommodating to the presumptions of modern science, but I don't believe anything I said above about what happens in heart transplants is a presumption of modern science. It's rather an observable fact.

All right, I've highjacked this blog enough for one day. Good night, all.

1. I don't think a Thomist would deny that a heart, or any other organ, has an organization proper to it. But the principle of organization would not be called a substantial form. But it isn't an accidental form, either. So what is it? If the major parts of a whole are themselves subordinate wholes organized of parts, then it would seem that they would have a form, just not a substantial form. I don't see any problems in incorporating this into Thomism.

2. If it is a problem, it is a problem first of physics/natural philosophy before it is a problem of metaphysics.

Sorry, to clarify -- the organs, such as the heart, have a distinct structure and organization. One can speak abstractly of each having a distinct form, if we mean simply structure or organization. But if we are to talk about the real organizing principle, as it pertains to development, it would seem to be the soul. Can a "heart" maintain structural integrity once it is removed from the body? For a certain period of time, depending on its environment, but not indefinitely -- corruption has simply been arrested.

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